WAYS WRITERS CAN CREATE LITERARY NFTS- PART 1
Hey writer,
How does the NFT craze make you feel? Amused? Annoyed? Are you indifferent to it? Or do you somewhat feel excluded from something transformational? If the latter is your answer, this article and the few more to come are for you!
NFT means non-fungible token. It is a token that when created assigns a unique code to the digital file it is associated with. The process of creating this unique token is called minting.
As a writer, no matter the kind of writing you do, as long as you have an audience for it in the real world, you can participate in the novel freedom and profitability that cryptobros and thousand of creatives are currently experiencing. This article will try to show you how you can get on your way to being an NFT creator. A few other articles will follow to show you more ways.
NFTs are created and sold on online platforms suitably called “marketplaces”. Every other time a new NFT marketplace is built but the most popular ones are OpenSea, Rarible, Foundation, Mintable, Nifty Gateway, and Larva Labs. They are basically like regular online stores. The defining difference is that they are built on a technology called a blockchain.
It is this blockchain technology that facilitates the creation of these tokens via the process of minting. To mint, you need to upload the digital file you want to make an NFT of. Digital files come in several formats but only a few of them are currently supported for minting on NFT marketplaces: JPEG, PNG, GIF, SVG, MP4, WEBM, MP3, WAV, OGG, GLB, GLTF. You cannot mint word documents in PDF, EPUB, or any related format. Basically, you can make directly NFTs of pictures, videos, audio, or 3D animations but not books, articles or anything purely in text format. Despite these restrictions, there are several ways writers can participate as creators in the NFT space.
One of such ways is making an NFT of a design of the title of your writing and attaching PDF or EPUB of your writing to the NFT as a downloadable file. Whatever creative work you have written, whether it is a novel, a short story, a play, an essay, a poem, or even a collection of the aforementioned, usually has a title. The first thing you need to do is make a visual design of the title. It could be a graphic design, an illustration, a great photograph or even an animation that you created by yourself or with the paid or volunteered help of a professional. I advise you to go the extra mile and make the title design really creative and evoking. However, if you do not want something too artsy, that is fine too. All that matters is creating a visual representation of the title of the writing as a picture or an animation. This title design, in a picture or video format, is what you can on any marketplace of your choice as an NFT.
In the process of minting, there is an option of including an “unlockable content” content. This is a downloadable file registered as a property of the NFT and can only be downloaded by the owner of the NFT. Many NFT artists use this to give buyers access to very high resolution/quality of their digital art that was tokenized on the blockchain. Sometimes this is necessary because there is a limit on the size of digital images you can mint into an NFT. It ranges from 25MB to 200MB depending on the marketplace. Reducing the size of a digital file often means losing the quality so they use the “unlockable content” option to give buyer access to a high quality rendering of the digital file. Some artist use it to include other digital goodies related to the NFT. This feature presents the perfect opportunity for writers to present their works NFTs. Instead of a higher quality rendering of your NFT, include the PDF/EPUB formats of their writings
If you are a writer with fans whose pockets are as deep as their love for you, you can make an NFT of your writing as described above and auction it to the highest bidder. It could be be a full length book, a single short story, a poem or a collection of the aforementioned. The buyer would be the only person who owns the book. In the metaverse, tweets, music, fan art and other forms or art are being sold at heart stopping prices so this is not such farfetched idea, right?
If you would rather sell at lower prices to several people, just like artists do with limited editions of their work. You have to create several variations of the designs of the title of your work. You could make color variations or you could significantly alter the design as many times as possible. Then when making NFTs of each title design, include the same downloadable version of your writing as the unlockable item only accessible to the several buyers.
You can also go the extra mile by making collectibles of the book or piece of writing itself by itself by introducing alternative endings, alternative point of views, or even introducing new chapters.
Another way is to make an audio versions of the writing. Just like we do in audiobooks. You may record the piece of writing and make an NFT of the audio. Artistes already do this with music and writers can take advantage of this too.
Making NFTs of your writing allows you experience a better resell value than in the what you would normally get in the traditional world. Buyers of your NFTs will resell someday and when they do you will immediately receive royalty which can be up to 10%. This means, if you set a creator fee of 10% and a buyer resells the NFT for 1 ETH, a creator fee of 0.1 ETH will go to you.
Moreover, taking this route will allow you and your readers/fans to engage you in new ways as you can directly interact with them without all the middlemen in the traditional world. It will also give your readers or fans the pride of ownership which is actually one of the reason NFTs are so popular. Additionally, It will allow you to enter mutually benefitting and transparent ownership agreements with supporters, readers, and even investors.
Wondering about writers who have done this before? Here is a link to the first NFT book. It is a short story and is up for sale on OpenSea. In the description of her NFT she shares her hope about NFTs for the literary world:
“…all those pieces that never made it into books and magazines might find a new way to connect with the world.”
I share the same hope too. If you found this read informative, follow me and share it with others. Thanks, xx
